"Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW." (aya-yu)
01/23/2015 at 10:43 • Filed to: Secret History
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"Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW." (aya-yu)
01/23/2015 at 10:43 • Filed to: Secret History | 3
| 0 |
There's some speculation on the interweb about the origins of Lamborghini/Audi 5.2l V10. Wikipedia says it's speculated that it's based on Audi's 4.2l V8. But i think, the Lamborghini's V10, as weird as it sounds, it might be an in-house design. Why?
Well, let's go back to 1993. Back then, Chrysler owns Lamborghini, and at 1992 they pockets quite a lot of monies due a very good sales of the only Lamborghini model, the Lamborghini Diablo. But in 1993 the sales were dropped and Chrysler thinks Lamborghini is bleeding monies. They want to get rid of them. Fast.
And then, at about the same time, Indonesian President at the time General Soeharto, introduced a new rules called "Automotive Policy Package of 1993". It says that the car makers would get a free import tax or even an incentive if they could make a car with at least 51% local contents.
And then, the youngest son of Soeharto, Tommy Soeharto sees the opportunity to build a new car industry in Indonesia. Tommy Soeharto is a quite jalop man. He love rally cars and race cars, and collects all the former Group-B Rally Cars in his home, and occasionally take them to the local amateur rally even and driven hard. So his car is not a garage queen. It's very far from a garage queen, to be honest.
But the problem is, he don't have the expertise to build a car, so he needs a partner. The first man he approaches was Setiawan Djody, who was an Indonesian Construction Equipment and Oil Tanker magnate. Quite logical, since afterall Construction Equipment and cars is related. A bit.
Setiawan Djody is a man who do buisness for fun. He always put his monies to the hottest thing happening at the time. For example, in 1970's when foreginers are start coming to Indonesia to set up new buisness here, he would provide houses for them. In 1980's, when Indonesia had massive oil production, he bought himself bunch of Oil Tanker and carries the oil. In 1990's, when everybody had monies and want a Supercar, he bought himself a Supercar maker, Vector.
Tommy, seeing the fact that Djody has an experience running a Supercar manufacture, ask for his help (and some monies) to buy the troubled Lamborghini. So Tommy could use the Lamborghini expertise of making a low-volume supercar to make cheap, high-volume National Cars of Indonesia. Oookay.
So, they approaches Chrysler, handed them 17,8 Billion Indonesian Rupiahs (40 Million USD), and set about to produce a car. Their benchmark originally is a 1994 Jeep Cherokee. In their mind, since indonesia at the time still full of jungles and unpaved roads, they need a very though and powerful SUV. But they also wanted it to handle like a sportscar, has better interior than a Cherokee, and priced lower than a Cherokee, which in Indonesia sold for 90k USD.
And to make matters even absurd, they want the car to be made from a very tough Titanium body parts. It's also will had a very sophisticated all-wheel drive system that will let you choose whether you're driving trough tarmac, swamps, sand dunes, or snow, like the one in Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. It's also will have a semi-amphibous capability since Jakarta is flooded a lot, and powered by....a V10.
This car originally want to be sold as a Lamborghini LM-003/Timor Borneo. He also thinking of making an Indonesian-made supercar with Lamborghini-Designed body and engine called the Megatechs, with engines ranges from 1 to 3 litres, and sold from 10-30k USD. Sadly, none of them ever comes into fruition, athough he claimed there's 7 of these megatechs running prototype in Italy.
Who knew this V10 idea later on will be developed even further during the Audi ownership, since Djody spent 20 Million dollars for researching all of the posibilities of the LM-003 and those budget Megatechs and god knows how many hours the engineer spent designing the V10?
How about the Timor? We do get a car from Timor. But it's just a rebadged kia Sephia. And i think i should write about Timor next time.
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